B2B2KGreat

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Those were the words Obama said facing a crowd of 75,000 in Portland and those are the words I say when I think about Bay to Breakers yesterday.

B2B really is San Francisco's finest moment. Saturday night, Peattie said, "I wish Bay to Breakers wasn't tomorrow." I thought he meant because we maybe weren't prepared, because he was tired, because he wanted to do something fun Saturday night and knew he shouldn't in order to rest up for the next morning, but no. He clarified: "Because it's going to be another whole year before it happens again." Somewhere around the starting line yesterday morning, I realized I completely agreed with him. Seriously, it's such a great day. I can't really picture it for you if you weren't there, but I came away from the day with a million little snapshots in my head, and I almost want to write them all down here to ensure I remember them forever. However, I think I'll spare you. All you need to know is that we started at the beginning. We lost people immediately and found them again, as you are wont to do. We lost people at what I call the Bermuda Triangle, the block between Hayes and Fell on Divisadero. Those people we didn't find again. We picked up a keg at a friend's house on Fulton, and I don't remember what happened to it. We saw the buffalo. And hours and hours later, we made it to the beach. I dipped my toes in the ocean. And then we took an epic N-Judah ride back to Duboce Park, where after a stop at JJ's house, we went to Naan and Chutney on Haight and wolfed down our only food since (in my case) a bowl of cereal at 6:30am. Satisfaction of a race well staggered.

God, I love Bay to Breakers.

Some pictures. The top one is the entire alphabet, plus symbols, minus H, Q and U, who were running very late. So we met them at 7th and Howard, except by that point we'd lost, like, everyone else.

This is the first word we spelled.

They were really excited about this. The colors... so amazing.

Not spelling anything, just felt like posting this one. Me, Laurel (R), and Zoe (Z). W (Sarah) is on the left you just can't see her face.
All Laurel and I wanted to do was spell "drunk." U was late, so we spelled "DRINK" instead. Ace (D), Laurel (R), Eli (I), Nick (N) and me.

Then we spelled "DRANK." JJ is "A."


Then they realized they could spell "RAW" and I just wanted to be in the letter so after they did that I threw myself on the end for "RAWK." (Laurel, JJ , Sarah, and me.)


Hours later we finally found U, and then we had lost N. This is me, scanning the crowd, looking for someone who could fake being an N. (Ace, Laurel, this guy Rick I met yesterday while I was yelling at him for not showing up earlier, and me.)